In his book The Bogey Man the late, great George Plimpton recalls an incident that occurred late one night as he sat around in the clubhouse drinking and chatting with a group of professional golfers. Feeling at ease, Plimpton decided to confess a secret terror. "I worry," he told the assemblage, "that sometime when I tee off, just as the club is on its downswing, a delicate and beautiful butterfly will land on the ball."

The writer imagines this whimsical vision will amuse the down-to-earth US golf pros, but instead of chuckling companionably they greet his comment with uncomfortable silence. Then, after a few throat clearings, coughs and theatrical yawns, one by one they announce that, all-in-all, it's about time they called it a day. They slope quietly away. "I kind of wish you hadn't brought that up," one of them tells Plimpton later.

Golfers, Plimpton concludes, cannot afford to let any fear, no matter how ludicrous, enter their heads because one day, just when they least need or expect it, that fear will likely pop back up and wreak havoc. They will be staring down the final fairway at Augusta, gazing at a golden destiny, and suddenly that lace-winged butterfly will float across their subconscious and they will ping one straight into the trees.

The same applies to other sports people, but while down the years certain golfers, darts players, cricketers, rugby place-kickers, tennis players and American football quarterbacks have been affected by one form or other of the psychological condition known as the yips, the hurly burly of football seems to immunise the players against any such mental blocks. Certainly we have never heard of a forward suddenly gripped by a total inability to kick the ball. Well, not if we discount Stephane Guivarc'h, anyway.

A suspicion that footballers might also fall prey to irrational doubt was opened up by Graham Taylor midway through the Aston Villa v Everton game last Sunday. A cross was belted into the Villa penalty area and found its way to Tim Cahill, who failed to direct his volley on target. On 5 Live, Taylor observed: "The ball just wouldn't come down for him."

This is, of course, an expression any fan has heard thousands of times. However, its full import only occurred to me at that moment. Suddenly a former England manager was casting the ball not merely as an agglomeration of wind and leather – insert your own Alan Green joke here – but as something with a capricious will of its own.

After Taylor spoke, I imagined the ball hovering mischievously just out of reach of Everton's Australian midfielder, as a cat will sit on a high wall and swish its tail at a leaping dog. I admit that it is unlikely the ball was wearing a wiseacre grin like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke as it resolutely refused to drop, despite the full gravity of the laws of gravity being brought to bear upon it. But I couldn't help wondering if the ball might not have given a sardonic little lift of its panelled head and murmured, "Not so smart now, are you Mr Chestwax?" as the Evertonian waited in a state of mounting anxiety for it finally to descend within range of his boot.

Nor was this an isolated incident of the ball tormenting the players. Later in the game it was back to its cunning tricks. A pass played out of defence appeared, momentarily, to have put Ashley Young through on goal, only for Taylor to inform us that: "The ball just ran away from him there at the last moment."

The vision here was of the ball apparently slowing as the Villa winger approached, only to suddenly speed up again, like motorist taunting a hitchhiker. Did it also glance over its shoulder and slap its backside, jockey-style, before accelerating towards touch to the accompaniment of clip-clopping noises and neighing? I certainly wouldn't rule it out.

We might consider the ball as neutral, but the more you examine the language of football the more you see that those within the game do not. That is why – in the eyes of football folk – a ball never simply deflects on its way into the net. Rather it "takes a deflection", apparently actively seizing the opportunity to cannon off a shin and create mischief.

I am not in the least surprised that such folk feel this way. After all, who among us can honestly say they have never felt that a work tool is openly defying them with a display of willful stupidity and dumb insolence? I, for one, can honestly say that never a day passes without my feeling that the irritatingly smug little Microsoft Word paperclip-thing that sits in the top right-hand corner when I'm typing is looking out at me and thinking: "I could have had James Patterson or that Mormon vampire woman, but – oooooh, no – I got saddled with this idiot."

As Ned Rifle in the Hal Hartley film Simple Men remarks: "Nothing like a machine to make a man feel insignificant."

Footballers must feel the same way about the ball. Though they never talk about it openly, of course. To do so would – like George Plimpton's butterfly – cause far too much psychological damage.